


be alright

by starkravingcap



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence, Soft John Seed, showering together, slightly codependent rook tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 21:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19259602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkravingcap/pseuds/starkravingcap
Summary: Heart in her throat, she takes quiet, hesitant steps down the hallway until she’s standing outside the bathroom door, wondering if this has been a terrible mistake. She shouldn’t be here. Her knees ache like she’s run twelve miles, and stiffness is starting to gnaw at the base of her spine. Her eyes feel gritty each time she blinks.She is tired and afraid, but she needs to see him. She needs to see if he is okay. Besides –- being in the wrong place is a specialty of hers.





	be alright

Rook’s lived a lot of places, but she thinks Hope County may be the strangest. It’s massive, geographically, spread out across the Henbane, the Whitetails, Holland Valley – she’s been here for months, and she still doesn’t think she’s seen half of it all. She’s not quite sure she ever _will_.

Despite its size, though, she’s learned that Hope County gives off just as many small town vibes as the tiny place she grew up. Everyone knows everyone, whether personally or in passing, and Rook can’t go anywhere without hearing what is, quintessentially, the latest town gossip.

Needless to say, word travels fast between members of the Resistance. It gives her an edge up on Eden’s Gate, most days, an internal surveillance system that tells her about the Seeds’ comings and goings.

 _You hear the commotion out at Seed Ranch?_  she hears one evening as she wanders past a group of Resistance members chatting just inside the outpost at Kellett Cattle Co.  _Looks like some of the Peggies are finally seein’ the light._

“What’s that?” Rook asks, before she can even stop herself.

  
“Oh, hey, Dep,” one of the men says. Rook has never been good with names, but she thinks his may be Eric. “I was just sayin’ it looks like there may be more defectors out there than we thought.”

  
“What do you mean?”

“Word is John Seed’s got a bit of a mutiny on his hands. Couple Peggies went rogue this morning, shot the place up,” Eric says. He leans up against the wall of the building next to him and crosses his arms over his chest. “’Course, that didn’t last too long.”

Rook’s stomach twists unpleasantly at the thought of a gunfight inside John’s home. Her next words, her tone, they all need to be carefully regulated – Kim Rye is the only one who knows about her indiscretions with John Seed. She’d like to keep it that way as long as she possibly can.

“Any word on his status?” Rook asks. Her voice is cool, detached, clinical – none of it betraying the anxiety curling inside her.

“Nothing, really,” Eric shrugs. “Friend of mine in the area says he may have been hit. No one knows for sure. Be crazy if one of his own people ended up doing your job for you, huh, Dep?”

Rook smiles weakly, tries not to fidget as the panic rises.

“Wild.”

She says goodbye, grabs her rifle, and leaves the outpost with her jaw clenched so hard she might chip a tooth.

* * *

There’s a roadblock just outside of Nick Rye’s place, close enough to John’s ranch that it can’t be a coincidence that it wasn’t there before today. Rook pauses from a couple hundred feet away, hidden by foliage and the thick brush where she crouches.

Instinct tells her to take it quietly. She lingers there in the bushes, rifle clasped in her hands, watching the Peggies patrol their little setup. She should get her binoculars out, map each of them out, come up with a strategy.

Instead, she shoulders the rifle and moves quietly though the trees, keeping her eyes on the men. There are four of them, one heavily armoured, the others carrying machine guns. Rook gets the angle on the armoured one. He paces back and forth behind the truck parked in the middle of the road.

Her body is thrumming with adrenaline. Part of it, she thinks, is the anxiety, the fear, the _not knowing_ about whether or not John is okay. The other part is a fervent anger that’s been building up inside her since she arrive in Hope County.

John is right – she is wrath incarnate, and she is about to prove it.

Rook darts out from the treeline, hardly making a sound as she heads toward him. Then she is on him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, the bulk of his bulletproof vest digging into her stomach. Rook squeezes, twists, and the man sputters, searching for air. Then—

_Snap._

He goes limp in her arms and Rook drops him, his body thumping satisfyingly against the sidewalk. She has tried to be silent, but the commotion has alerted the dead man’s friends, and before she knows it Rook is crouching behind the truck to avoid a spray of bullets.

One of the men turns the corner, machine gun aimed at her face, and Rook _lunges_ , fists flying and nails clawing at him. She tears at his skin, his hair, lands a solid right hook against the side of his face and feels his nose break beneath the blow. He reaches for her throat, his gun clattering to the asphalt, and when Rook looks in his eyes she sees complete and unfiltered fury.

She smashes her head into his. He crumples, and pain radiates through Rook’s temple. Not her best work, but it’s done the job. 

The other two are easy to take out – they’re rookies, new recruits, and they put up a good fight, but Rook is faster, stronger, _angrier_. Blood dripping into her eyes, she grabs one of them by the hair and slams his face into the concrete beneath her feet. He doesn’t get up again.

The last one is scared as she rounds on him. He steps backwards, makes to run away, but Rook’s hand is on the grip of her 1911. There’s one shot, clean and quick and echoing loudly, and the guy drops. There’s a hole in his chest and his breaths gurgle in his chest as his lungs fill with blood, but Rook doesn’t hear him.

She stands in the middle of the roadblock, observing the carnage, and takes a deep breath. The world around her smells clean, crisp, metallic with the blood of the four dead men.

Her eyes flick toward the direction of the ranch. Rook wipes the blood from her forehead, shoves her handgun back into her thigh holster, and keeps moving.

* * *

By the time she sneaks past the guards stalking the outside perimeter and into the ranch through a laughably unattended open window, Rook feels like she’s been hit by several different vehicles. She tastes blood and dirt in her mouth, aches _everywhere_ , and is pretty sure she might have a concussion.

Taking on four armed men on her own may have been a poor choice, in hindsight, but she’s never claimed to be the most brilliant woman alive.

Rook creeps up the stairs, familiar enough with them now that she knows what spots to avoid, knows which steps will creak under her weight. At the landing, she peers down the hallway. John’s bedroom door is open, which means he’s likely not there, but the bathroom door is shut, dim light peeking out from the crack at the bottom.

Only John uses John’s bathroom.

Heart in her throat, she takes quiet, hesitant steps down the hallway until she’s standing outside the bathroom door, wondering if this has been a terrible mistake. She shouldn’t be here. Her knees ache like she’s run twelve miles, and stiffness is starting to gnaw at the base of her spine. Her eyes feel gritty each time she blinks.

She is tired and afraid, but she needs to see him. She needs to see if he is okay. Besides –- being in the wrong place is a specialty of hers.

Her stomach twists as she reaches out to rap her knuckles gently against the door. Through the wood, she can hear John moving around in the bathroom. The muffled sounds of running water stop abruptly, and she imagines his slender fingers twisting at the knobs of the sink’s faucet. Rook sees the handle twist before she hears the door click open, and then John is standing in front of her.

He is shirtless but wearing sweat pants, his hair wet and his beard neatly trimmed. She is struck all at once by how  _normal_  he looks.

“You’re really starting to make me question my home security, my dear.”

He means it as a joke – the corner of his lip is tugging upwards – but Rook doesn’t laugh. Instead, she swallows thickly and follows the lines of his body, her eyes fixed on the spot a few inches from his belly button where a thin piece of gauze is taped. His ribs are a canvas full of purples and blues, mottled skin that proclaims he’s been hit by  _something._

“Not that I’m not pleased to see you, of course, but is there a particular reason you’ve broken in tonight?”

“Are you all right?” Rook asks quietly. Her voice sounds a million miles away, even to her.

John stares at her like he doesn’t understand what she’s asking, eyes raking her up and down.

“Am I—Rook, I’m fine. Are  _you_  okay?”

The question isn’t one she was expecting. Rook wonders what she must look like for him to ask that, for him to use her  _name_  instead of one of his sickeningly sweet pet names. She knows that her hair is a disaster, stiff with dried blood and dirt - the rest of her can’t be much better. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.

John reaches out, and his fingers brush against her elbow.

“Come here,” he murmurs.

Each step toward him feels like a light year away, but somehow Rook manages to get there. She crowds him up against the bathroom counter, places a hand gently on his side. His skin is smooth and warm. He smells clean.

John cups the side of her face in his hand, then lets his fingers spider upwards toward her scalp, where her hair is matted with blood.

“Is this your blood?”

Rook doesn’t actually know. Every part of her hurts, so it may very well be. She doesn’t speak but instead shrugs, reaching out to wrap her arms around him. One of his hands settles on her back, the other splayed across the back of her head. For a moment, she feels safe. Calm. She forgets that her head is pounding, that her lips are dry and cracked, that her stomach aches. She forgets the anxiety thrashing around inside her chest. John kisses her forehead.

“I should go,” Rook says abruptly. She pulls herself out of the embrace and stares up at him. “I need to shower. And you’re probably tired. You should go to bed.”

She doesn’t know why she’s trying to push him away. Every part of her screams to stay here, to stay wrapped in his arms, quiet under the sickly glow of the bathroom lights.

Staying, though, means she has to put a name to the feeling that drove her all the way here in the first place. Staying means she has to confront it. Rook doesn’t know if she can do it.

John makes the decision for her, his voice gentle and his breath ghosting over the shell of her ear.

“Let me help, darling.”

His hands go to the hem of her shirt and he tugs, up past her ribs, bunching under her shoulders until she lifts her arms and lets him pull it over her head. The shirt falls silently to the bathroom floor. Rook starts to wriggle out of the embrace to help him but John doesn’t let her get very far before he’s gripping her tighter.

Goosebumps prickle at her skin as he reaches behind her to unhook her bra. He slips the straps from her shoulders, presses feather-light kisses across the line of her collarbone, tosses the garment on the floor next to her shirt. The dirty jeans come next. There’s a new tear in the knee that Rook doesn’t notice until the denim pools around her ankles and her toes catch in the rip. How has she managed to do that?

John finally lets her go. He steps toward the shower and twists the water on, and Rook, watching, strips away her underwear. Her pile of clothes tell a story – a horror story, full of blood and fear and terror. The memory of the evening makes her grind her teeth together. She thinks she can feel tiny pieces of dirt between her molars, gritty and sour.

“Get in,” John encourages, once the water is hot and steam is billowing from the stream.

It looks inviting. Rook pads toward the shower and slips under the warm spray, and John joins her a moment later, slipping in behind her, a warm weight against her back. The water drills against her chest, her arms, her shoulders, and for a moment, Rook feels better than she has in months.

John’s hands come to her shoulders and squeeze, kneading the muscles, his thumbs pressing firmly into the back of her neck. She leans back against him and sighs. Water runs down her face, her chest and her belly in rivers, the blood and dirt melting from her skin like hot wax, spiralling down the drain. She feels John move, and then he is scrubbing shampoo into her hair with the tips of his fingers, gently, because he still doesn’t know if the blood in her hair is hers. It must be, because his fingers brush against a spot near her temple so tender that it makes her flinch. The shampoo stings.

“You should have gotten someone to stitch this up,” John murmurs. Rook can barely hear him over the rush of the water, but she feels him run a finger along what must be a cut about an inch long. “Does it hurt?”

“Stings,” she says, “but it’s fine.”

The gentle scrubbing is hypnotic. Rook feels as though she might fall asleep standing up and is grateful that John is behind her to keep her on her feet. He scratches at her scalp gently, then turns her so her back is facing the water. Rook tips her head back and lets the shampoo run down her back, splattering against the shower floor. Her eyes are closed, but she feels John lean forward to kiss the hollow of her throat, the side of her neck, the corner of her mouth.

She feels at home here, in this moment, soap dripping from the ends of her hair and John’s breath against her cheek. Rook noses in a little until their lips meet, and they kiss a few times, slow, lazy, peaceful. The panic that’s kept her on her toes all day has left her now, and her mouth starts to go slack halfway through because she is so  _tired_ , and John laughs, reaching up to scrub the last of the shampoo from her hair.

“You okay?” he asks. She opens her eyes and follows the lines of John’s face. His eyes are a bright blue, his expression soft as he watches her.

“Tired,” she admits.

They spend another ten, maybe fifteen minutes in the shower. Rook can’t be sure how much time goes by exactly, but the water starts to run cold just after John finishes cleaning her skin with nicely scented soap. She rinses and shuts the shower off.

Rook can’t map the journey from the shower to John’s bed. Things are starting to move in slow motion, like a movie montage of the mundane moments of her life. Somehow, she ends up cloaked in one of John’s shirts, curled under the blankets with him pressed up against her back.

She was calm in the shower, but now her mind is racing again, filling in all the blanks she’s desperately been trying to ignore.

“You—I thought you were dead,” she says warily, suddenly wide awake. Her eyes are burning. “They said—.”

John sighs. He pulls at her hip gently, his fingers pressing into a spot that hurts enough that Rook thinks it may be bruised. She rolls over, runs her fingers along the clean gauze patch that John must have applied during their transition from bathroom to bed. Rook wants to peel the tape back, wants to see exactly what was done to him, how bad it really looks.

“I’m fine, darling.”

“I know,” Rook says, “but for a minute, you weren’t. You were dead.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while, staying uncharacteristically quiet as he reaches out to brush her wet hair from her face. John has always liked to touch, tactile like no one else she has ever met. His fingers linger next to the ear he tucks her hair behind, then skim down her cheek to the line of her collarbone. Eventually, he grabs her hand and slides it up to his chest. His pulse thuds under her palm.

“I’m here,” John murmurs. “Just a scratch, darling. You haven’t lost me yet.”

Rook chokes out a shaky laugh, splaying her fingers wider, feeling his heartbeat steady and constant beneath her skin.

“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, curling tighter against him. “This is embarrassing.”

If the Resistance could only see her now — at her least heroic, skin pale and hands shaking, wrapped up in the enemy’s arms. Rook’s tried to plan out all the ways that this holy war might end.

This was never one of them.

“Shh,” John quiets her, threading his arms tightly around her and pulling her close to him. “Everything is all right now. You need to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Rook is grateful that he hasn’t decided to press her. John is always seeking answers, always seeking the truth, always seeking confessions. For once, it is comforting to see him simply  _be_.

Her hands slip around him, revelling in his warmth. John settles one hand on the small of her back, warm and steady, and runs the fingers of the other through her hair. Rook savours every touch, every brush of skin against skin. Eventually, she starts to drift off, her head tucked neatly under John’s chin.

It may be her imagination, but she thinks she hears John speak just before she falls over the precipice and into unconsciousness.

“I won’t leave you.”

**Author's Note:**

> who asked for this? no one. not even me. 
> 
> find me on [ tumblr](https://wishb0ne.tumblr.com/) for more seed family nonsense!


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